Do You Change Your Married Name When Your Husband Dies?

The first thing my father ever gave me was my name. Nora, for the great-great-great grandmother who emigrated from Ireland and chose Minnesota as her new home. Elizabeth, for his aunt, and McInerny, for himself, duh.

Growing up, I hated my name. It was too unusual, too clunky, and way too Irish. I was born in the Midwest in the early '80s, and went to school in a sea of Jennifers, Amys, Emilys, girls whose names were easy to find on a keychain, whose last names were neat and tidy and easy to pronounce: Johnson, Barrett, Smith.

"No," I'd correct people when they called me Nora Mick-in-ernee or Nora Mack-ninny, "it's like two guys in a bar… Mack and Ernie…" I'd write out new versions of myself with every new crush. Some day, I'd meet the perfect guy who could rescue me from this name-based hell I was living in. Perhaps a Chad Johnson or a Dan Smith. He'd be tall and handsome, and most importantly, he'd have a last name that people could spell and pronounce without any guidance.

My criteria for marriage was clearly beyond reproach.

But it turns out, my last name wasn't so bad. It was mine, and even though I found out in my twenties that my parents had actually forgotten to put my middle name on my birth certificate, meaning all of my legal IDs were a lie, it was a good name. It fit me. It wasn't just mine, it was me. I was Nora McInerny.

"It's like two guys in a bar… Mack and Ernie…"

In my twenties, I did meet a perfect guy. He was tall and handsome and had an equally unusual last name, but at that point, what did I care? I had a name I liked. My certainty that I'd change my name with my marriage had been replaced by a certainty that I would not, no way. Why would I trade in my identity for a new one? I always felt a little sad when my female co-workers would return from their honeymoons and send out an updated email address, effectively deleting their former professional identities in favor of matching names with their beloved. And sadder still when their wedding hashtags were #RIPInsertBirthNameHere. Like, oh, you had to KILL your old identity? Cool, very chill.

But when it came time to fill out my own marriage license, I balked.

"Really?" he said as I replaced my last name with his on our marriage application, "you love your name."

And I did. I do. But I also loved him, and he had Stage IV brain cancer, and not taking his name seemed like something wrong, a way of hedging my bets, or holding back. No, the only way to truly show this man and our family and friends how much I loved him was to take his name as my own.

Just as importantly, my dad thought I was done with his last name. My father was, to put it mildly, a traditional man. "You're not a McInerny anymore," he told me in the days leading up to my wedding. "You take a new name to build a new family."

Now, I look back and I'm like, "Nora! The patriarchy! You do not have to change your name just because society and the actual patriarch of your family tells you to!" But at the time the patriarchy seemed warm and comforting, like it was just looking out for me and my future family, who, heaven knows, nobody would even know was mine if we didn't all have the same last name!

Now, I look back and I'm like, "Nora! The patriarchy! You do not have to change your name just because society and the actual patriarch of your family tells you to!"

On December 3, 2011, Nora McInerny was gone (#RIPMcInerny), and Nora Purmort came to take her place. But it was hard to let her go. I slipped McInerny in as a middle name, I insisted on using it during introductions and in my online bios, signed it on everything from greeting cards to checks, but it didn't matter. The McInerny added too much effort for other people, and I became Nora Purmort. My new name, it turned out, was not any easier for people to pronounce. PurmoNt? Pure-more? Poor-mort? But worst of all, it just never felt like me.

Three years after our wedding day, it was my husband's funeral. Six weeks earlier, we had buried my own father. Both of the men whose names I carry are now dead, and along with an endless ocean of grief, I'm left with an identity crisis as well.

This is one of those terrible word problems with no clear answer, threatening my Life GPA.

My father was Stephen McInerny. His name became mine, and for 28 years, that's who I was. Watching him die, surrounded by my three siblings, I wanted to slip back into that name, curl up inside of it like an oversized blanket, and carry it the way I had for 28 years.

My husband was Aaron Purmort. His friends called him Purm. Or, because his skinny little self somewhat ironically insisted on it, Big Purm. He was mine, and I was his, but without him, the name that was so him fits me even less. Without him, it's a too-small sweater I'm always tugging at.

After a divorce, people understand why you'd change your name. But after being widowed? It feels like you're expected to become a living museum for the dead, to keep everything — your name, your memories — just where they left them, forever.

In my head, I hear a chorus of anonymous voices telling me that I would be wrong to discard Aaron's name, the same way I'd have been wrong not to take his name in the first place. The name, to this anonymous chorus of voices, is a sign of my love for him, of our life together, of the family we had. To quiet this voice, I asked my most trusted confidante (Google) what to do, and she was like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. So I also asked my Hot Young Widows Club, and they were like, "great question." I know widows who changed their last name, and widows who kept their first husband's name until they remarried, and widows who kept their first husband's name even after being married to their second. Some of us change our children's name when we remarry, and some of us don't. Some of us take our birth names again, and some of us don't. This is problematic for me because I've spent 33 years pursuing an A+, 100% at life and this is one of those terrible word problems with no clear answer, threatening my Life GPA.

So, I started slowly trying on my own name. In introductions, in my Twitter bio (where my two last names had previously exceeded the character count. And people reacted…not at all. Nobody noticed. Or, if they did, they said something behind my back the way decent people ought to.

if you feel uncomfortable with my signing emails with "xo," then maybe don't be my accountant, okay?

"I'm Nora McInerny," I say to people when I meet them. Because, even though there's another name on my byline and my book cover, that's who I am.

The little universe made up of my son and me has recently collided with another—a whole new team of people to love, with their own last name. It's amazing, having lightning strike you twice, to have your heart grow to include new people. And it's amazing to share a home and a life together, and then have your brain be like, "Cool! You're in love! Now, let's say you marry this guy… do you change Ralph's name, or just your own? What about future kids? What about when Ralph goes to school and people are like, hey, why is your name different than both your grown-ups? And nobody sits with him at the lunch table and his life is RUINED." And you have to tell your brain, "it's 2016, not 1956, and families are all different now, and if the only way we have to signify our unity with one another is a name, we are clearly not much of a family."

Because names are changeable. With a lot of paperwork, but still. What isn't is the love I have for Aaron, and the life we shared together. That is all indelible, a part of me. I licked his ashes from my fingers. I held him while he took his last breath. I pushed his baby — with a 98 percentile head — out of my vagina. There is no erasing the love we have, the family we built, the life-altering experience of being present physically and emotionally for someone's life and death.

I still haven't decided what, exactly, my legal name will be. Nora McInerny? Nora Purmort McInerny? Nora Borealis? Nora Smith? Kidding. But regardless, the chorus of voices in my head can kindly STFU.

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